


our antebellum innocence

by ladyvivien



Category: Mapp & Lucia - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/F, Past Relationship(s), garden produce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3155861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvivien/pseuds/ladyvivien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diva Plaisters may not be as sophisticated as Lucia, with her Italian and her Mozart, but she knows a metaphor when she sees one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our antebellum innocence

The others can't see what's going on, but Diva can. Maybe it's because of her new grapefruit cleanse or her third eye being opened. Maybe it's because once, long before Lucia and her fake Italian arrived, Diva had been the one Mapp battled with. She knows what those battles mean, what's behind the animosity.

Irene might think that she's modern, that the old dears of Tilling can't possibly understand what it is she gets up to behind closed doors with all of those models of hers - but then, doesn't each generation think they invented sex? She and Elizabeth certainly did, all those hours locked in her secret garden. 

Diva Plaisters may not be as sophisticated as Lucia, with her Italian and her Mozart, but she knows a metaphor when she sees one. 

And now it's Lucia who's lounging in the garden, for all that Elizabeth has banned her from eating garden produce. Perhaps if Diva hadn't been so eager to acquiesce, to call for a ceasefire celebrated in fig-smeared skirts and kiss-swollen lips, they might still be there.

It happened gradually, the settling of the sediment of what they once had beneath layers of social niceties and forced friendship. She'd thought it was age, although her desire hasn't waned. It's probably all the grapefruit. But something seemed to come alive again in Elizabeth when "darling Lulu" arrived, something that Diva hadn't even realised had died. There's only been one other person that Elizabeth ever bothered to give a nickname to, and it's been so long that no one ever really remembers that she used to be called Godiva. 

Now, of course, Elizabeth claims it's a kindness because she's so plain. But at least one of them remembers that _Diva_ was first whispered in gasps and whimpers and promises that they'll be _friends forever, won't we my beautiful one?_

Everyone laughs at her vanity, but it's the only way she has of getting Elizabeth's attention these days, like a peacock fanning its feathers in front of a hen. Each morning brings another barb from the ferocious Miss Mapp, and every morning Diva wonders if the other woman remembers the torn dresses and ruined petticoats, if she thinks about the flesh beneath the fabric. Softer these days, of course, and more of it, but still the same body that responds to her best friend so intensely. 

Compared to Lucia, she's week-old mutton dressed as spring lamb. That glossy hair and all those angles - cheekbones you could cut yourself on, and if she was a betting woman anywhere but the bridge table she'd put money on that thought having crossed Elizabeth's mind once or twice. The shine of this one won't tarnish as quickly as hers did, that's for certain. 

She wonders if Lucia will learn what she did too late, that Elizabeth Mapp's interest wanes once the battle is won.


End file.
